


six, nine (nice!)

by transishimaru



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), First Kiss, M/M, Miscommunication, Sappy as hell, Spin the Bottle, y'all want some purple prose? 'cause this is fucking violet.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 05:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18866620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transishimaru/pseuds/transishimaru
Summary: Six seconds, and nine times they kissed after that.





	six, nine (nice!)

**Author's Note:**

> I initially did not think this fic would wind up being longer or sappier than _eight, thirty-one_ , but every time I looked at the word count, I thought, "I have so much more to write before this is officially over." 
> 
> Like with _eight, thirty-one_ this title is a lore joke: Mondo’s birthday is June 9th (6/9, if you’re American). There’s no particular song for this fic, but you can have [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNwkN9vrUYY) anyway.

He’s not particularly comforted by the fact that things like this happen at parties in movies. He hasn’t seen very many movies, that he can remember. Where the image comes from, he doesn’t know. But he really wouldn’t have come here tonight if he’d thought there was some chance of this or something like it happening, and yet here he was, in a boy-girl-boy-girl-Chihiro circle with Junko on one side and Sayaka on the other, watching an empty Coca-Cola bottle spin teasingly.

Junko. So that was Hifumi’s turn, then. And Junko looked disgusted, as Kiyotaka had found people like her so often were when confronted with people like him. Hifumi was no stranger to this; Kiyotaka was oblivious to a lot, but the cruelties of childhood were not on that list. The Ultimate Fan Artist gave her a soft, chaste kiss on the cheek.

She seemed surprised, and reciprocated without thinking.

The next turn was Hina’s. She was eyeing the bottle thoughtfully.

As she took her turn, Kiyotaka wondered what the percentage was of people who actually wanted to be here, at this party, playing this game, when so many of them looked so uncomfortable. How did Leon manage to convince them all into doing something so unsanitary?

“It has to be a full kiss on the mouth,” Leon is saying, now that Byakuya has landed on Makoto.

“No one said that to Hifumi and Junko,” Makoto counters.

And no one says why, but they all know. It makes Kiyotaka feel bitter, even though neither party in that instance is complaining. They look embarrassed. Is it having been called out, or was Leon right when he suggested it was both their first kisses?

Byakuya tires of arguing and leans forward to plant a hard, inflexible kiss on Makoto. Leon grumbles under his breath that they “could have been more enthusiastic” about it. Toko looks like she’s going to faint.

The next spin is Celestia, whose bottle-spin points at Chihiro. The latter is shy and blushing up to the roots of their hair, tumbling forward. Celestia cups their face delicately, and holds the kiss for five seconds. Chihiro looks nervous: flustered, anxious, and exhilarated. Altogether, unharmed.

Kiyotaka wonders for a brief moment if it’s possible to predict fate. If Hiro hasn’t actually been spouting nonsense the whole time. There’s something electric in the air around them that sets Taka’s hair to rising when Mondo puts his hand on the bottle, and turns. And Taka thinks, before it even comes close to stopping, _It’s going to land on me_.

And it does.

There’s very little attention paid to the moment when it comes up. For all that Kiyotaka had assumed his classmates would want to see him stumble, they’re surprisingly uninterested. It makes things a little easier for him to kneel with his back straight, although the posture does nothing to keep him from falling. Mondo is rough around the edges, including where he grabs Taka’s jacket and drags him, hand supporting him on the carpet, to press their lips together.

That they align feels unreasonable. It’s too smooth. _Two seconds_.  He’s imagined his first kiss a dozen times and it never went like this. His classmate might kiss too harshly, but it doesn’t feel bad. _Four seconds._ It doesn’t feel weird. It doesn’t stop Kiyotaka from kissing back. _Six seconds_. Which is a big flaw, a big error on his part, and his head feels fuzzy when he breaks off and sits back down, staring in concentration at the circles in the carpet, the loops where it’s come up from pets getting their untrimmed claws stuck in it.

He expects everyone to be talking about it, to be teasing him for it, but there’s a burst of euphoria in his chest.

No one is. Leon is teasing Chihiro in a friendly sort of way, giggling at their luminescence. Mukuro is taking her turn, getting a kiss on the forehead from Hiro who proclaims this means he is now her father. He swipes a thumb across her forehead and proclaims her ‘Simba’, to the giggles of everyone around the circle. Time is moving its normal pace whether or not Kiyotaka feels like he’s in it. Two more turns and now it’s his. He doesn’t think at this rate that anyone will notice if his hands are shaking. He tries not to think about what it means that he wants it to land on Mondo again.

It doesn’t come anywhere close. He’s put too much force behind it, he guesses, because it only barely pushes past himself to land on Sayaka.

He suspects there’s someone here she actually wants to kiss, since she’s the one who suggested the game to begin with. And he suspects that it’s not himself, since she chose to sit right next to him, making the odds that this would happen very slim; and, of course, given the fact that he can’t imagine anyone would want to kiss him in the first place. He’s going on the assumption that he’s supposed to move first, both as the person who spun the bottle and the boy in the situation, and he plans on something simple and platonic (unless that would raise too many suspicions, will they know what he’s like if he goes to kiss her on the cheek instead of the lips? Will they ask why he didn’t protest when it was Mondo? Will that make his classmate look bad?) but he’s not given an option in the matter. Sayaka seems almost drunk on the social interaction, and kisses him directly on the mouth quickly before pulling back and giggling.

But not giggling at him. Just giggling, in general. Giggling like everything about the situation is funny, the game itself, and maybe it is.

Kiyotaka tries to force himself to pay attention to the rest of the game; to Sayaka landing on Byakuya, to Chihiro landing on Makoto, to Leon landing on Hifumi. He tries to force himself to remember what Sayaka kissing him felt like, but he remembers it in the same way he remembers particularly strong gusts of air. And he tries to spend the rest of the night interacting with anyone who will talk with him, hoping his brain will fast-forward when it replays, and that no one will suggest him for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Leon leans against the arm of the couch, next to him, and says, “You thinking about the likelihood we’ll all get pneumonia from this?” before he leans down, and whispers, “No, really, what _are_ our chances?”, because not even he can ignore the possibility that everyone in their class sharing drinks, sharing lips, sharing food will spread like wildfire if even one person is carrier.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “No one’s been sick recently, but,” and he looks at Leon pointedly, “Sayaka will kill you if she gets laryngitis.”

He recoils, and he mutters under his breath, and Kiyotaka tries to focus on the color of his eyes – white? grey? some kind of blue? – instead of rewinding, swaying, thinking how Mondo’s had looked closed, letting his mind wander to what his hair might have felt like if Kiyotaka touched it, trying not to fall asleep with his head on someone’s shoulder.

* * *

There’s a week in between the party, and what happens after. Kiyotaka is tempted to call them incidents, because he doesn’t see the point in getting used to their occurrence. Thinking of them as planned is too much. _Overwhelming_. No one plans things about him, for him, concerning him. So they must be coincidences, even if they are contrived.

(No, he hasn’t really thought about what that means.)

It’s not unusual to see his classmates outside of class, in the hallways, being…mates, for lack of a better term, and Taka had never thought of their engaging in friendly behavior as odd before. What pulls his eyes to Mondo Oowada, standing and talking and joking and laughing with students Taka has never seen before, he doesn’t know. Reserve course, he thinks, with no particular feelings in mind about that, even if some bitter part of his brain tries to bite at him. They’re students, just like he is, even if they could afford to buy their way into Hope’s Peak it shouldn’t matter if –

“Hey, hold up! Ishimaru, I gotta talk to you.”

He stills like he’s been forced, the shock of someone actually calling to him freezing him in place. It takes a minute for him to recognize he should turn and face his caller, warmth echoing from his feet to his shoulders like noises bouncing off the walls of a cave. He hasn’t felt this before, a magnetic draw he has to fight against to stay in place.

_Like forces repel. Opposite forces attract._

(?? Where did that come from...)

“Is there something I can help you with, Oowada?”

He puts in an effort not to say his classmates names with such an air of demand, to say them friendly, as if their last names were their first, but to keep the formality of politeness. But something about it still bemuses the one in front of him, blinking with wider pupils. “Uh, y-yeah -” he stutters. “Y’ think we can go somewhere private?”

It's the kind of question that fills Taka with a fond dread, if such a thing exists. This is a normal conversation, probably about classwork he’s fallen behind on. Something he can predict, something he can help. He gestures for Mondo to follow him outside, to wall he knows is unoccupied.

He stands so his own back facing the wall, arms crossed over his chest. Mondo stares at him, and he stares back, quiet for about three minutes until Taka asks, “What can I help you with?”

Mondo blinks, eyes trained lower on Taka’s face, watching as he chews absentmindedly on his lips. “I wanna try something,” he grumbles finally, fingers tugging on loose strands of hair at the back of his neck. “Just – just close yer eyes, okay? And don’t yell.”

He wants to say, ‘That’s easier said than done.’ It is, but Mondo puts his hands on Kiyotaka’s shoulders, and pushes him back, until he’s flat on the wall, back rigid. And he trusts his classmates, even knowing their judgment isn’t always the best; so he swallows his questions, and closes his eyes, looser than he usually does.

He doesn’t want to hope that what’s happening, is. But he’s only felt this twice, and he remembers.

He kisses back on instinct. It feels natural, almost, even though he’s hopelessly inept.  Even though he wants to open his eyes, and see if the expression is the same…

There’s a break apart and Kiyotaka moves without thought. Before Mondo can walk away, or pull back, or change his mind, Taka moves forward, noses colliding in a rush to kiss him first. To keep him from leaving.

He feels breath pushing against his lips, like Mondo is laughing. And he wishes he had permission to open his eyes and see it. He’s always been beautiful when he smiles.

Wait –

But nothing waits. He feels fingers and warm palms directing his face, tilting it so he can feel it smoother, more in sync.

And it’s awkward, trying this in repeats. He can’t see and his instincts weren’t built for this. Every movement is imperfect, inexact, and his heart is racing faster with each passing second.

This feels better than it should.

It cements further with each second of pressure. They’re on school grounds. Someone might see. He’s supposed to be the ideal student; but here, he can’t stop himself. And nothing else has ever felt like this.

When Mondo pulls back again, pulls back for real, Kiyotaka finds it hard to breathe. He wants to dive in again, wants to drown.

He doesn’t want to call it anything. His eyes flutter and so does his heart. Mondo is breathing hard. Kiyotaka feels…awake. In ways he never has before.

What is he supposed to do now? What would one of his more experienced classmates do? He can hear Makoto’s voice in his head, telling him to be himself, to do what feels natural. But the only thing that would feel natural right now would be falling back into him, letting this thing he’s feeling consume him and set him alight.

Except he doesn’t think that would be welcome. Mondo looks scared, like he’s not sure of what he just did or why. And it puts Taka on edge a little, like he’s done something wrong that he doesn’t understand.

Mondo’s face goes from flushed to pale and he bolts, hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders hunched. He doesn’t exactly run, probably wary that Taka might shout for him to stop if he does and out whatever it is they’ve been doing.

Not that Taka would.

* * *

The third time they kiss is after school.

It’s been a little over a week. They haven’t spoken since the last time. It hasn’t been a conscious decision on Taka’s part. He doesn’t talk much to anyone when there’s a lot going on, and there is. Every class seems to have a project, and most of his free time is spent drafting it all in pencil on lined paper, pressing his eraser to his lips and trying not to bite in.

Makoto invites him to a class get-together. He agrees, then has to ask with embarrassed flushed what it is he’s just said yes to.

His classmates laugh, but not unkindly.

Even in the rec room with a borrowed karaoke machine, he sits with a notebook in his lap, planning out schoolwork. Every so often someone will lean over his shoulder, to look at what he’s doing, and he’ll try to shield his work with his body.

Nobody bothers telling him that they’re not planning on cheating off of him. They only interrupt when he tastes the grit of peeled rubber in his mouth, and Makoto guides his pencil from between his teeth.

Someone’s voice breaks, and his neck snaps up to follow the sound.

It’s Mondo, who has the microphone in hand, knuckles so white against the handle it’s a wonder the plastic hasn’t also cracked.

He’s reminded very suddenly, very out-of-nowhere, that diamonds never fracture. That they’re formed under intense pressure. What that piece of information has to do with Mondo’s resolute glare in the opposite direction, he’s not sure. His brain just glitches sometimes, like he’s turned to a page he needed, but can’t remember what for.

He’s getting sidetracked. And staring.

He’s thinking what it might be like to kiss him, again, with everyone watching.

He’s overcome with an oppressive wave of sadness; that isn’t possible. Mondo would not want him to. The first time had been a fluke, and the second had probably been an experiment. Curiosity. He got into Hope’s Peak because of his rebellious nature. It wasn’t that he wanted to kiss _Kiyotaka_ , but that he already had, and that he liked to break rules.

And that was what Kiyotaka was, in full embodiment.

As for why Kiyotaka kissed him back…

He grumbles in frustration, forgetting for a moment where he is, the class activity. All he has right now is an annoyance at himself. He can’t remember what his reasoning was, what excuses he’d made, even when he’d spent so much time replaying it in his head. And the time he’d spent replaying it made him feel giddy, pins and needles. Like limbs falling asleep, but in his chest. He’d been trying to remember what it had felt like, if kissing him had tasted like anything. Trying to imagine, as sleep set in, what Mondo’s face may have looked like when they kissed.

And every time he woke up, he felt guilty. He had such a fragile balance with his classmates. Now he’s known them a year, they call him a friend, and it’s something he commits himself to.

(He’d been nervous that this wouldn’t go well, that they would expect him to change to fit their standards. But they hadn’t. So far, no one had complained that he wouldn’t give them 100% of himself.)

So when he is bumped, a light tap on the shoulder, and Leon pulls the pencil from his hands, he does not receive what he expects. “Dude,” Leon says, shaking his shoulder, “Take a break. You’re growling.”

Oh. He had done that out loud. Kiyotaka scowls at his notebook, eyebrows furrowed. “Sorry, I just don’t think I know any of the songs on that machine.”

“Oh? Huh. Well, we can keep looking,” Leon says, scratching his head. “Still, you should like, stretch at least. You’ve been all hunched over.”

“Actually,” Celes says, hands folded primly, “Would you mind getting us some more ice?”

He blinks at her for a moment, chaos setting in. Does this mean they want him to leave? Do they really think he’s just best suited to the task?

“I can go,” Makoto starts to offer.

“No offense, Naegi-dono, but I don’t believe you’d be able to carry it up here,” Hifumi says.

So he really is then, he supposes, especially now that Sakura is up on a duet with Hina, looking bemused with her choice of song.

“Besides,” Celes continues, “He clearly needs a break.”

He’s going to protest, but when he stands everything in his body feels stiff and unmovable. “It’s no problem,” he says instead, because Leon and Celes are apparently right. “I haven’t done much to help out tonight, anyway.”

He doesn’t stay to listen to Makoto’s assurances that they didn’t mean to imply any such thing. He feels tense and sore and overheated, and it’s probably better if he gets away now so his thoughts don’t drift into dangerous territories.

They’ve been threatening to, so often.

When he gets out into the hallway he feels less overwhelmed, cooler, like his mind is no longer working in jerky movements but in fluid motion. He’d take his time getting the ice, but that might be rude. He’s supposed to socialize, to “network” as his father or Byakuya would say.

(But it’s hard for him to think of his classmates in such cold and distant terms. They’re his for-the-first-time-ever friends [even Mondo] and as such, he feels a kind of special bond to them.)

(Especially Mondo.)

The way that particular thought slips through the self-imposed filters of his mind is alarming, and suddenly he stops in his march, standing in the middle of the kitchen with a feeling like he’s just crawled into a pre-heated oven. There’s no transitional period where he adjusts to his fixation.

And he doesn’t even know when it became so important to him.

He can’t help but stay paused where he stands, hands clenched into fists, trying to slow his heart rate. Like everything over the past two weeks, this has not been a steady decline: this was an unseen plummet. He had been hoping from the start of their first year that he could learn to make friends or at the least, that he could be something more to his classmates than the person they all tried to avoid. And it had been hard, at first, with everything still new, with everyone trying to adjust to each other, but somewhere along the line, he had succeeded.

And somewhere along the line, his mind had singled out the biggest troublemaker, as if his opinion had somehow mattered more than the rest.

He presses his fist to his lips to keep from making another unsolicited noise, but even as he trudges his way to the freezer he can’t make himself stop thinking about it. He could write it all off as desire to reform a violent peer, but he really hasn’t done much of that. He’s nagged and he’s made himself an obstacle and he’s insisted on the rules, but really no more than he had with the rest of his class. It was possible now that Mondo did more of the homework, made more of an effort, but to Kiyotaka’s surprise, Mondo was never someone he had to bother to go to classes. And despite any small triumphs he could conceivably count, Mondo still swore constantly and smoked and drank underage and drove without a helmet and, overall, still lead the biggest and most violent gang in the country.

What he thought, what he _thinks_ , shouldn’t matter.

_So then, why does it?_

Maybe it started –

He hears footsteps coming towards him and he jolts, his body and mind overreacting together. His steps when he moves are loud to his own ears, shoving himself almost entirely in the freezer for the ice.

When he moves back out, Mondo is on the other side of the freezer door.

Kiyotaka nearly drops the ice, but there are too many implications in the action and he grips the bag with double the intensity, stinging his fingers on the chill. His classmate doesn’t know what he’s been thinking about, it’s probably of no interest to him and it’s none of his business besides.

(The extra helping of defensiveness will be his undoing if he doesn’t stop overthinking every move.)

Asking him, ‘What are you doing here?’ would be unnecessarily critical, and he’s learned that’s no way to approach a conversation with Mondo – or, really, anyone. So he bites his tongue for a second and asks instead, “Do we need something else?”

Mondo shrugs, and Taka’s eyes follow the movement of his shoulders down to his arms, to his hands shoved in pockets. And then he makes himself look away, embarrassed at his own drive to distraction. “I dunno, man, but you’ve been taking pretty long to get a fuckin’ bag of ice, so they sent me here to check on you.”

There are around twenty-four feelings occupying his chest. He could unpack them, acknowledge them, deconstruct and analyze what they all mean. But in the present moment, they mean nothing. Taka has to believe that, or his feet will grow roots.

“My apologies,” he says, his voice as loud as his shoes. “I just got caught up.”

He turns to walk back, hoping the ice won’t melt against a body that feels inflamed. It doesn’t take Mondo much to catch up to him, slightly taller, hands still in fists in his pockets. “Is it overwhelmin’ for ya in there?”

Taka looks at him, because he has to.

“Everyone in our class, shoved in the rec room, crowded in one place…” Is he _trying_ to make Kiyotaka anxious? He rubs the back of his neck again like he’s nervous, looking down at the floor. “I can understand why yer hidin’.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” Taka argues. He twinges at himself, cringing in a spike of self-hatred. Does he really need to argue every time he opens his mouth?

“Bullshit,” Mondo replies. Despite the swearing, he doesn’t sound angry. “You ain’t gotta hide it. We all get that it’s hard for you.” They did? He could feel himself flushing, sweat creeping up on his hairline, his ears blocking out half the words Mondo says next, picking through without retaining. How did they know things like this were hard for him? Was it obvious? Were they laughing?

He gets caught up, again. And he doesn’t take notice of which comes first: the stop in their steps, or Mondo’s hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.

“We don’t have ta go back,” Mondo tells him. He looks concerned. Taka’s pulse elevates. He doesn’t get it. There’s no reason for it to. He doesn’t want it to. _It’s dangerous not to look both ways before crossing the street_. “If you don’t want to,” Mondo finishes, eyes focused somewhere on Kiyotaka’s face, but not his eyes.

“I do,” Taka says, voice far away and mouth working out of sync. “Just not yet.”

Mondo nods, still not making eye contact, still holding him in place while neither of them move. It’s odd that they don’t, where they are, in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining hall. And it’s weird that they don’t speak, but he understands, because it’s always frightened Taka that he might inadvertently ‘say’ things he doesn’t say, things he doesn’t even know himself. Like the way he’s managed to convey unease without putting it out there consciously.

He wonders what it’s ‘saying’ that he’s staring, unintentionally, at Mondo’s lips.

It’s dangerous, these reflective yellow Do Not Walk signs that he is hurtling towards. His mind and body work in opposition, pushing him like a moth to light. It’s most certainly not unavoidable, but it very much feels like it is.

What do you say to someone you’ve kissed twice?

What does that break?

What does that build?

…pressure. It builds pressure, and pressure breaks. Mondo might be a diamond, but he is not.

(He’s been having a lot of thoughts like that. Thoughts that don’t make linear, logical sense. Thoughts that work in metaphors. Thoughts he doesn’t quite understand, but they feel right.)

He doesn’t ask Mondo to kiss him. He doesn’t need to. He does it all the same.  

It feels different this time, unrushed. Unprompted. No pretenses. Taka’s eyes are open when Mondo takes his chin between his thumb and his forefinger and angles his head so their lips fit together.

He drops the ice, or he throws it, and it breaks apart the chunks that made it harder to carry. It feels a lot like his resolve shattering, ignoring the fact that he needs to breathe air and breathing Mondo instead. His eyes close without thought and when his heart hits his chest he gasps and it doesn’t hurt. Hands move from his chin to his cheeks to his neck and he is tugging on something to drag Mondo closer.

_I can’t drown. I know how to tread water._

There’s sounds in the dining room, sounds that reverb and take too long to register in his head. Mondo pushes him back when he hears it, and Taka tries not to fall over dizzy in the rush. Tries not to feel something else that threatens to eat him, diving for the ice to cool off his burning skin.

It’s someone from the class above, a face Taka can’t place to a name with his brain frazzled as it is. They’re under the tables, looking for something, and it should be in his duties to ask if they need help.

Mondo is stalking away, shoulders tight up against his ears, radiating energy Taka can’t quite explain.

Against his chest, the ice starts to shift and melt.

* * *

Their fourth is most certainly not an accident. It’s not an experiment. It’s deliberate.

Taka is not now and never has been good at interpreting social cues. He is aware, if only vaguely, that the three times ( _six seconds, it started with six seconds_ ) he has kissed Mondo have been something of a cultural taboo. The first time, and only the first time, had been excusable by means of a party game. If they got caught, things could be messy.

He’s ashamed to find himself thinking on repeat that he’d like to change it when he becomes Prime Minister. Aren’t there more important causes he could hyperfocus on? To think this is something that can, that _will_ , continue seems foolish.

Mondo talks to him now, friendly as he is with their other classmates, a status gained over time. But he doesn’t mention that he knows what Kiyotaka tastes like, doesn’t try to touch his hands or face, doesn’t linger on him more than he does with others.

In moments when he allows himself the kindness of self-honesty, he can admit that it hurts. He spends the daytime pushing his feelings back, telling himself that he has more important tasks to busy himself with. _When things appear in threes, they are a pattern_ ; and he ignores his own internal dialogue like it’s a form of self-care, swatting away at thoughts he hasn’t and won’t permit himself to have.

It’s over, he thinks. It’s done.

It’s been almost two weeks.

Kiyotaka sits in the library with all his books out, forcing himself to read and write out by hand everything he’s supposed to have absorbed this week in class, everything he’s supposed to absorb next week for class. As far as study methods go, it falls under harder, not smarter, but the truth of the matter is that he chose the technique as a way to keep his mind off of things he’d rather not fixate on, closing the hole that seemed to open up in his chest if he sat in silence for a little too long. And it’s not like Mondo to be in the library, or it isn’t like what Taka thinks he knows of him.

But he’s in here anyway, sitting at the table in front of him, back to Taka, going between a blank lined sheet of paper and a magazine.

It’s nothing. It’s distracting.

And Taka still hasn’t figured it out, what he’s supposed to do, how he’s supposed to act, how he should talk to Mondo in a crowd when there’s things they’ve done that their class doesn’t know about. Mondo seems to take it with such ease, to talk to him like nothing has happened. Maybe to him, nothing has changed. Kiyotaka knows he should take cue from that, it’s just...

It’s not as easy for him. He’s never known what’s normal, the rules about socialization everybody else seemed to have ingrained. He’s never been good at coping with sudden, drastic change, let alone pretending that it never happened.

...He’s not going to get any work done, like this. Not with Mondo so close, not speaking, like every point in the past four weeks that has felt significant to Taka is unimportant to Mondo. Maybe it is. Maybe that’s Taka’s problem.

He doesn’t know if he sighs out loud or just in his head, but he attempts to not look anywhere but at his own hands, at his own belongings as he gathers his things to leave. There’s something urging him to look up, the feeling of eyes watching him, but he thinks it’s better if he doesn’t follow up on urges that will only disappoint him.

He’s nearly back to his room when he feels it, hands on his back, turning him around. And he has to wonder what it means, that he always seems to have his back to things, if this is why he never sees things coming.

It’s Mondo, his hand on Taka’s collar, looking down at him.

“Are you okay?”

He doesn’t know how to answer that. The collar of his gakuran feels too tight on his neck when he tries to swallow, and he can’t make himself look Mondo in the eye. Just being like this, in the hallway, feels like too much. If he tries to speak, he’ll just say something foolish, something like -

“Why do you keep kissing me?”

Stupid. Utterly stupid. He might even start crying, a combination of anxiety and his own worthless stupidity.

“Because I want to.”

There are a lot of things that Taka normally would, and probably should, be asking for clarification. Like, does he want to kiss Kiyotaka, or does he want to kiss anyone, and Kiyotaka is just who’s there? And he should be, for the future, not making himself appear quite so desperate for affection. The last thing that he wants is for someone to get the misrepresentation that he’s weak.

But he is _something_. Something undeniably confused, something undeniably overwhelmed. And he is in this moment, perhaps more than anything, unstoppable in his course toward something reckless.

This time, _he_ kisses _Mondo_. And Mondo doesn’t pull back.  This time, he gets to see Mondo’s eyes flutter shut before he closes his own, gets to tug Mondo down to his level using the edges of Mondo’s jacket.

When he kisses him this time, and when he thinks about it later in the privacy of his own room, he knows what it is that holds him, what it is he keeps coming back to: whenever their lips touch, he forgets about the myriad things bothering him. He forgets about every insecurity that haunts him, leaves every doubt in some corner of his mind that can’t be touched when they’re together. Like Mondo is, himself, holding it out of reach. He kisses him and he kisses him and he kisses him, because when he kisses him he can breathe without the weight of every self-imposed restriction.

He can break his own rules.

And one of them is this: no Public Displays of Affection in the hallway. It’s a grey area near the dorms like they are. The part of his mind that yells, that screams, that throws things at his desire to be someone different are setting off alarms that this is skating on thin ice. That he has been skating on thin ice every time he’s let this slide.

It’s only a matter of time before he slides right off a cliff.

He doesn’t count seconds, he doesn’t think about time. They don’t stop kissing because someone interrupts them. When they break off it’s because Taka’s head is swimming and he can’t feel his lips. It's the most he’s ever stepped outside of himself, and by consequence, the most powerful he’s ever felt.

Mondo’s features look soft like this, eyes still closed, the lines around them smudged. For a moment, it’s like Kiyotaka is seeing someone else altogether - someone beneath the exterior, the jacket, the cussing and the underage drinking and the reckless driving. If he tried now, he doesn’t think he’d be able to feel his own pulse, racing under his skin. He reaches out, forgoing caution, to touch his classmate’s cheek, fingers mapping without direction.

When he opens his eyes, it’s only by half, head leaning into Kiyotaka’s hand like a stray cat asking for attention. 

Taka falters, remembering himself, remembering where they are, and pulls back, hissing internally at how fast his hand moves. All at once, his internal monologue is back: _it’s not like you’ve been burned, it’s not like you’ve been hurt._

_What if you’re hurting yourself?_

_What if you’re hurting him?_

But Mondo regains his composition as quickly as he does, hands curling into fists, shoving one in his pocket and rocking back on his feet. It’s hard for Taka to read anyone’s expressions and see the deeper meaning behind them, and now is no different. Whatever look Mondo is supposed to be giving him is obscured by his hair, and for a second Kiyotaka feels something like shame.

What feels worse is watching him leave.

* * *

Kiyotaka has never been a bearer of secrets. He’s never really had any before.

He remembers distinctly being ten years old and saying, point-blank, to a teacher, that he didn’t believe in having secrets, because he didn’t believe in doing things so shameful they would need to be hidden. His teacher had given him a kind look that he felt didn’t match her tone when she told him that sometimes things were more complicated than that. He didn’t understand what she meant, and kept arguing long after everyone else had moved on.

She was annoyed. He did that often.

He was annoying. He still might be.

Even with his perspective changed now, with a secret to keep, there is a part of him that rails against the tightness of his own lips. It’s natural to take on different opinions as you grow, as you progress, and it’s not necessarily a betrayal of character to feel or think differently from how you used to. He bears all of that in mind, and he still hates himself.

He stays quiet about it, for this: It’s not his secret alone to tell. If it were a secret he alone had to bear, he would be honest. But it would be unfair to Oowada to out him prematurely.  He likes to think his class would understand.

Makoto certainly will, he knows. Like Kiyotaka, he possesses no natural talents, or none that the school can assess. Kiyotaka sees in him someone with an instinct for leadership, beyond anything Taka would ever be capable of. There is no one in their class, the class above, the class below, the reserve course – who dislikes him. He advocates for teamwork, camaraderie, and forgiveness. 

Kiyotaka bites his lips the hardest around him. Sometimes, literally, until he tastes blood on his tongue.

Makoto is, primarily, the reason he spends less and less time before the start of class studying, and more of it socializing. Around him, it’s easy to forget that he’s different, that he’s weird, that he is not inherently likable. Easy to forget that Makoto is the only reason Mondo looks at him in the first place.

He’d been smiling, thoughtless, and he freezes. Another one of those thoughts that came unsupervised.

Mondo has been coming to class earlier these days to talk to Makoto. Everyone does. Kiyotaka...appreciates that. He appreciates that Makoto is using his popularity for good. He appreciates that Makoto eases the tensions between peers who wouldn’t otherwise get along. 

He doesn’t know how his thoughts got so scalding. Just that now, being this close to Makoto puts him on edge, and his attention snaps away. Mondo is leaning in close to him, resting on the edge of Kiyotaka’s desk and laughing at something Makoto is saying, and all Kiyotaka wants is for everyone to leave, to go back to being the only one in the classroom this early. To be alone with the thoughts that are jeering at him.

Someone is tapping at the edge of his desk, repeatedly, with no discernible rhythmic pattern. His head whips up with irritated recognition. “ _What?_ ”

It’s Mondo, leaning over into his space. His hair skates the top of Taka’s head as he leans in.

With him this close, he could...

“Are you okay?”

What is with him and this question? It’s like he aims to ask the one question Taka has the hardest time answering. Every time, he is asking the person most uncomfortable with dishonesty to lie; the person with the least amount of social skills, the question it takes the most ability to answer.

He sits without answer, the words ‘I’m fine’ resting on his tongue and not moving.

He wants the teacher to enter and save him from this, the way Mondo is in his space and his classmates are talking around them and not noticing how very close they are, how cold Kiyotaka’s arms are in fear and how close he is to doing something stupid. How close he is to thinking something dumber.

Mondo’s hand is placed so carelessly next to his that their fingers are touching. Taka’s twitch. He considers, briefly, grabbing Mondo’s hand, pressing their palms flat together and threading their fingers together. As it is, he shifts until his nails are pressed against Mondo’s skin.

And one of Mondo’s fingers overlaps one of his.

It's small enough to think of it as a mistake. It’s large enough for Taka’s heart rate to turn rapid, over-exaggerate, extrapolate, and scream in echoes at himself: this isn’t love.

And he doesn’t know why he thought it was. When he started to think it was. How that became a possibility, even subconsciously.

Hadn’t he always been careful? He’d rarely been anything else.

The teacher comes at the most inopportune moment; when he is starting to feel adjusted to the touch, when he has regulated the breathing of his heart enough to look up and see if they’ve been noticed, see if Mondo was as soft in that moment as he’d been when they were alone. If he had anything to be jealous for, or if that look was just for him. Maybe it’s better that he isn’t given an opportunity to find out, to dwell on impossibilities.

He forgets everything about the look, their hands, his thoughts when the lessons start. When he falls asleep, it’s with a grasping ache in his chest that tells him he’s forgetting something important.

* * *

There’s a note in his locker in practiced and sharp cursive letters.

_You can’t have him._

* * *

The fifth time they kiss is when Kiyotaka’s biggest fear is coming to fruition.

He appeases the ongoing internal monologue that tells him he is betraying everything he stands for by asserting, alone in his room, “I am not ashamed of being gay.”

There’s a hole that opens in his chest when he says it aloud.

He doesn’t know what his father thinks, how his mother would have reacted, how his classmates feel on the subject. Things aren’t perfect, but they are changing. Who knows? Maybe this will give him an edge when he goes to run for office; something to distinguish him from his opponents.

But there’s something horrifying in the notion that his private experiences are on show for someone else. It is one thing to make yourself transparent, to uphold the values of honesty and truth, and another to have your privacy violated.

His stomach hurts.

By this time on any other day, he’d be in the cafeteria, a passive participant in morning group ritual. This morning, he thinks even rice would make the bile rise in his stomach. When he falls back onto his bed, his heels hitting the box spring, he feels and tastes the burn of last night’s tea racing up his throat. He swallows it down with snot and the urge to run to his bathroom. He has to work this out before class starts.

_It isn’t the choke that kills you, it’s when the rope snaps your neck._

He’d known this wasn’t going to last. He knows that Mondo likes girls, and that he’s supposed to as well, and marry one even if he never does. A friendship marriage, maybe; someone who knows that while he may love them, he will never be _in love_ with them. That has always been the plan.

Always. He's always known. It was always going to be a boy. It was always going to be someone who challenged him, someone like this. It was always going to be Mondo, and he was always going to get his heart broken. Always, always, always.

His breath comes in shaky aftershocks that rock his stomach and he’s thankful that the rooms are soundproofed and no one can hear him. It’s not unusual for him to cry when so many things set him off: frustration, loneliness, anxiety, fear, genuine sadness.

He tries to push his mind away from the letter, crumpled in a ball in his hand. Could he take a sample of the handwriting, find out who sent it? Probably. It isn’t a script he recognizes, which means it’s not likely to be someone in his class. But there’s too much risk in admitting he’s being threatened, even if the only threat is only as vague and ominous as _I know_. It isn’t the taboo, the person, the bullying. It's the scandal.

He must be wallowing well past the allotted amount, because his doorbell is ringing.

He wipes his tears off on his jacket sleeve before he stands, so fast that he gets dizzy. He shouldn’t be surprised when Mondo is the one on the other side of his door.

Mondo’s leaning with one arm up over his head against the door frame, his other hand in his pocket. When Taka opens the door he pulls away to stand up properly, and Taka thinks, _you can’t have him_.

“You doin’ alright?” he asks.

It’s churning again, unsettling his stomach. “I’m...”

Mondo lets him trail off, and watches, eyes taking in every distressed corner of his face. “You don’t wanna talk about it?” he asks. Taka shakes his head, digging his teeth into his lips.

Mondo’s eyes follow. “That’s alright.” Why is he speaking to Kiyotaka’s lips? Kiyotaka lets his mind fixate, running his tongue over the indents of his teeth.

Mondo mirrors it back.

“If you need t’ talk, uh...”

Kiyotaka nods and doesn’t feel it. He thinks he says the word, _Same_ , but doesn’t register his lips moving.

“C’mon, man, quit loitering. Taka’s gonna kick your ass if you’re late.”

In another circumstance entirely, watching Mondo’s change of stature would be...funny, probably. But now, with cursive jabbing his thoughts, the abrupt shift in gears is a shattered window. Mondo doesn’t quite leap away, but he spins on his feet, coat trailing out behind him. His arm comes down around Taka’s neck, pulling him out of the room. “The fuck d’ya think I was talkin’ to?” he asks.

Leon watches them, odd eyes assessing the curve of their bodies together.

Taka should pull away. There’s too many conflicting feelings in his body, and they don’t mix well.

But whatever Leon sees fits to him, and instead of probing he laughs, arms crossed over his chest. “I can’t believe I’m gonna make it to class before the Morals Committee guy. Unreal.”

They watch him walk off, the pattern of his footsteps turning to a run when he thinks Kiyotaka is out of range. And Kiyotaka intends to follow him, stopped by the tug of a hand on the back of his jacket that holds him in place. It’s Mondo, rounding on him, shifted again, eyes lidded. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks.

...he doesn’t know what he’s feeling. It’s everything he’s felt before, dulled. He could get used to this.

He wants to.

“Yes,” he says, voice quieter than he’s used to using it. “Just...anxious.”

He recognizes in that moment, that he should tell Mondo. Or even, potentially, that Mondo has been made aware, too. He nods once, like he understands, eyes skirting off to the side of the hallway. Taka follows his gaze, not catching the moment when Mondo’s hand raises to cup his cheek.

He closes his eyes before he feels it, Mondo’s lips pressing against his own. 

It’s not the longest, but it’s the sweetest. He can make the most of how long it lasts by letting himself feel it in different contexts: morning, evening, and night. Out of school, in private, in the future, at home. However far he dares to take the next couple of seconds.

His lips follow Mondo’s when he pulls away, grounding Kiyotaka with the hand on his face, fingers curling in the hair at the back of his neck that he hasn’t trimmed yet.

He forgets about the note in his locker.

Mondo’s hand moves from the back of his head to the top of it, ruffling his hair between his fingers. “C’mon, rep. Let’s go to class.”

* * *

It’s when he’s cleaning up for the day, sweeping the last tears of paper into a pile, that he meets her.

She doesn’t introduce herself, and only knocks once on the door so he’ll turn around before she enters. “Good afternoon...” he starts to greet, but realizes he doesn’t recognize her. He thinks she may be reserve course, a friend of Makoto’s. He should do a better job of remembering peoples’ names.

She closes the door behind her, moving toward him.

“My apologies,” he says, bowing awkwardly. ”I’m afraid I’ve forgotten -”

“I know what you are,” she says.

He doesn’t need her to touch his shoulder, to pin him to the wall with a bruising force to feel the buckets of ice water on him. She doesn’t need to go farther for him to know exactly where this is going.

And she knows.

“In the hallways,” she says, tone even, smile venomous. “That must be breaking some kind of rule.”

He doesn’t answer. He remembers his father telling him, once, that if he was confronted without a prepared statement, to stay quiet. “They have nothing to throw back in your face if you keep your mouth shut,” he’d said.

Even if he had something written out, he’s not sure he’d be able to say it. His mind crawls back to this morning, to the note in his hand and Mondo’s taste on his mouth and the burn of acid in his chest.

She steps back from him in time for Makoto to come back from cleaning off the erasers, caked in chalk dust. He sees her, and smiles. “Hey -”

“Oops, sorry!” she says, too loudly, sauntering out the door before Makoto can get her name out.

Once she’s gone, Makoto turns to Kiyotaka, eyebrows raised. “That was weird. What did she want?”

Kiyotaka’s hands are still holding onto the broom so tightly that he notes to himself the wood might fracture off and splinter in his hand. He looks to Makoto, and tells himself to breathe. In, out. Four seconds each. Four second hold.

He could tell Makoto what happened, what she said. But there’s really nothing he has for proof, nothing definitive in her words. Makoto is nice, and he’ll listen, but all he can hear is Makoto telling him that he’s making something out of nothing, that he’s exaggerating, that he’s misunderstood.

He looks away when he answers, not wanting to answer Makoto’s questions about how tears have made themselves to the corners of his eyes. “Like she said. She just got the wrong room.”

* * *

He doesn’t count the four days as spaces between their lips, but as a spike in unprecedented happiness, like every day between five and six is built to make up for the frightening girl with the whiplash hair who cornered him in the classroom. His classmates are on time for classes, they turn in their homework, they keep the classroom tidy without having to be tracked down, they all offer ideas for the school festival without waiting for Taka or Makoto to make all the suggestions first.

The unfortunate mess of it is that he doesn’t get a chance to bring up the incident to Mondo, to ask him if knew who the girl was. Though he wasn’t, in retrospect, really sure how to ask such a question, how to phrase the way she spoke or the note she left.

By the time they get alone, Kiyotaka’s totally forgotten.

And it’s not the only thing he’s forgotten.

The garden on the top floor is frequently unoccupied. They don’t plan to be up there alone together, and when he sees Mondo he can’t remember what he came up for. He watches him from a distance, tending to plants, letting his face slip into something passive. He turns and works without noticing Taka watching him, eyes and expression distant.

He hears the echoes of four or five class parties ago, Oowada rambling, not inebriated but excited, about the dog he’d raised before coming to Hope’s Peak. Kiyotaka’s never had a pet before, could not relate to his story, but something in the way he told it kept him steadied in the chaos around them.

He was seated on the arm of the couch, a plastic cup of water between his knees, one leg pressing against Mondo’s arm -

_Imprinting is a process whereby a young animal comes to recognize another as an object of habitual trust._

“He sounds like he was very smart!” Kiyotaka said.

Mondo had turned, face contorted into a glower, registering Kiyotaka’s earnest expression by inches. He’d swayed a little, the couch worn down and dipping too low to the ground, already on its last legs and uncomfortable, and leaned against Kiyotaka’s side as he shouted, “Right?!”

…

How long has he been feeling like this? His chest, his stomach, feel – taught strained pulled stretched – like the wire on guitars, wound up past a point they can handle. G, D, E minor, G7, C, C minor, G, G, D, E minor -

“Shit! Ya fuckin’ scared me.” The fog in Kiyotaka’s head evaporates all at once, leaving him misty. He’s missed so many smaller movements: Mondo finishing his work, realizing he’s there, walking to meet him – or him, walking to meet Mondo. How could he move without knowing it?

There’s dirt on Mondo’s cheek from where he’s scratched absentmindedly and left marks.

The part of Kiyotaka’s brain that has not been working especially well the past couple of weeks tells him to reach up, and brush it off. To watch Mondo’s face flush in embarrassment and affection, the way couples always do in films.

_Mise en scène: the arrangement of scenery and stage properties in a play._

He must lift his hand partway, because Mondo is holding it.

“You’ve taken very careful care of those plants,” he says, which is not at all how he meant to say it. He knows he’s blushing as his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and he says, ineloquent, “They look good.” _Say something else, something more descriptive._ “You would make an excellent gardener.”

Mondo looks back at his work, eyes narrowing in assessment that Kiyotaka knows from personal experience is all too self-critical. But he seems to think better of it, at the last moment, the squint easing out, the tension in his arm fading. Taka hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his hand so tightly. “Huh. Backup career, I guess, if that carpentry thing don’t work out.”

“Carpentry?” Mondo’s face goes bright pink, looking as far off in his peripherals as he can, covering it all with a sneer. Taka can almost hear the bite in words he isn’t saying, nervously cutting off the circulation to his fingers. “I had no idea you could do so many things.”

It sounds so rude that for a moment, he is sure that Mondo will hit him, if only because Kiyotaka would gladly hit himself, given the chance. It’s horrible for him to doubt his classmates, or imply that he ever would; if Mondo says he can do carpentry, of course he can. It’s not as if he is untalented, or directionless, as Kiyotaka had initially thought. Mondo doesn’t seem to take offense to his words, though, and scoffs, free hand pulling at his loose hair. “It’s not like I’m good at it,” he says.

To which Kiyotaka replies, fully and instantly certain, “I’m sure that’s not true.”

Mondo stares at him, communicating something that Kiyotaka can’t decipher.

He gets the urge to clear his throat, and narrowly avoids caving in. For want of something better to say, he opens his mouth and shoves his foot in. “You really should stop smoking, though. If you develop something like asthma, it could be hazardous to your future career in either industry -”

Mondo cuts him off by laughing, short and loud. “I quit, like, a month ago, didntcha notice?”

Taka has no idea where he gets off looking so smug, but there’s something about it, the incline of his head and the way Mondo pulls his held hand to his chest and the chipped edges of his teeth that look like fangs that make Kiyotaka feel impulsive. “No,” he says, even knowing in hindsight that it’s obvious.

“Want me to prove it?”

Truth or dare. They play that in movies too, right? Spin the bottle, seven minutes in heaven, Ouija boards, Bloody Mary, truth or dare.

He doesn’t know which one of them moves first. He does note, with some satisfaction, that Mondo must be telling the truth, because he’d be able to taste it if he wasn’t. That was the entire point of Mondo kissing him, wasn’t it?  There’s a drop in his stomach, and two things happen:

First, his hand opens, dropping Mondo’s. Mondo takes this opportunity to put his hand on Taka’s waist, pulling him closer.

Second, he goes to bite his own lip, and misjudges, biting Mondo’s. And when he goes to lick his own lips, as he always does after he’s bitten his lip, he licks Mondo’s instead.

Mondo responds by pressing the tip of his tongue in Taka’s mouth.

It’s not a lot, probably, by someone else’s standards. He can’t definitely say that Mondo’s tongue on his feels bad, even if it is on the list of things he didn’t think he’d ever do.

What it does, without a doubt, is overwhelm him easily, and he pulls off, pressing his face against Mondo’s chest, a sound like rushing wind in his ears. He feels Mondo’s hand on the back of his head, dragging his fingers through his hair. And he bows his head just enough to press his cheek to Taka’s head and ask, “Too much?”

Taka nods.

He's aware, very faintly, that Mondo is pressing his lips to his hairline, his temple, his ear. His heart is beating so fast that his throat is numb.

He’s so tempted to look up himself, kiss Mondo’s jaw, press his body closer.

Then he hears the garden doors open.

For a moment that probably does not last as long as he thinks it does, he considers the possibility of not moving, of letting whoever has just entered find them as they are and let the consequences sort themselves out. But whatever his mind thinks, his body is a coward, and jolts in Mondo’s embrace, and whether it’s his reaction that sparks it or Mondo’s own decision the result is the same: Mondo lets him go and turns his body away, going solid and immovable in the wake of their visitor.

It’s her.

* * *

When he is supposed to be sleeping, Kiyotaka replays the events of After in his head. They stick out to him the way the thorns on Hiro’s rosebush tore through his cheap gardening gloves near the end of last semester, when it had been a class effort to get the plant under control. The flowers were beautiful, but Toko had asked, ”At what cost?” as she tugged to get a braid loose from vines.

“All life is precious,” Hiro had responded, “Even when it attacks us.”

Hiro’s response had, at the time, been complete nonsense, an attempt to escape the well-deserved glares of his classmates who did not appreciate being dragged into his mess.

Now, to Taka, the words feel like a punishment.

There wasn’t anything he could say to her to make her leave him alone.

She hadn’t actually said anything accusatory in front of Mondo, hadn’t even implied that she knew anything, and for some reason the fact that he was, indeed, alone in her targeting, made him feel more intimidated.

...It was total nonsense, wasn’t it? Being intimidated by something so small. Something that doesn’t even exist, that isn’t really happening.

But one thing was clear, from the way that they talked: Mondo did know her. Kiyotaka hadn’t paid much attention to their conversation. It seemed to come to him in slow-motion and murky, like the way sound moves underwater. And he’d missed, again, her name being said, if it had been at all. She’d smiled at him, teeth sharp, and he felt the bite of words she didn’t say. She followed them out of the room, hands fluttering close to Mondo’s body as she spoke.

And Mondo made no mention of her, when they made it back to their class. He talked about how the plants were doing, drove the conversation into talk about the upcoming festival, volleyed insults with Kuwata, while Kiyotaka sat there with his chin on his hand, wondering if he’d imagined it all.

Even now, he isn’t certain that he didn’t. It feels inconceivable that something so monumental could be happening, and have things outside of it stay more or less the same. Shouldn’t life as he know it be collapsing? Shouldn’t his classmates be looking at him differently? Shouldn’t people be trying to shove him into lockers, vandalizing his belongings, ambushing him in hallways? Those are all things that he could take, that he could handle. He is, physically, much stronger than he seems. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be tangible.

It wouldn’t keep him up at night.

Kiyotaka sits up and swivels, his legs hanging off the bed. If he’s not going to be able to sleep, he might as well study. He’s three units ahead of every class, but he could make it four. He could study for things coming up next year.

He shuffles to the light switch, but once he’s got his light on all he does is stand by the door and stare at the patterns on his wall, letting his eyes grow unfocused until he’s seeing double.

There’s a shadow growing underneath his feet, spilling in his room from the hall outside.

Everything in him starts to float. He’s not sure if he can move his body or if it can even move itself to shake. Why here? Why now? It’s not even five in the morning yet. How did she get here? Is it too late for him to turn the light back off and pretend that he’s asleep?

The shadow waits, and shifts, like someone pacing outside the door.

And Kiyotaka experiences it again: the precognition Yasuhiro always talks about.

His quickly rising recklessness could get him in a lot of trouble one day.

But today – tonight, this morning, whatever time it is – he happens to be right. Mondo is standing on the other side of his door. _This, too, is a pattern_. One that will be hard to forget when the time comes.

“Oowada,” he says, as if someone might hear.

Mondo looks at him, eyes pink and worn, and Taka feels like he’s been hit in the chest. Foolishly he wonders if the reason Mondo looks so close to tears is because Taka addressed him by his family name instead of his given one, but dismisses the idea quickly. Mondo would tell him, surely, if he did something to cause him pain. Confrontation is in his nature.

But he doesn’t start the conversation on his own, prompting Taka to continue, “Is everything alright?”

Of course it isn’t. He wouldn’t be at Taka’s door in the middle of the night if everything was fine.

He entertains the brief, sick hope that the girl from the garden has sent him a note as well, that he’s going to tell Taka that she’s been...something, so that Taka won’t be alone in his crises. It’s a horrible thing to hope, selfish, but it’s too early and too late for Kiyotaka to control his own thoughts, or even to consider the far more likely possibility that Mondo is going to break it all off.

He stares, not at Taka’s eyes or even his lips, but at his chest. “Nah,” he says. “’S just -”

Kiyotaka watches as he fidgets, trying not to be distracted by his disheveled appearance; his bare chest, his hair down in curls around his face, eyes free of makeup -

“Would you like to come in?” he blurts out. It comes out less like an understandable sentence and more like one unbearably long word. He expects Mondo to look at him with some measure of surprise at his offer, but he doesn’t, or even respond verbally. He makes his way inside and stands next to Kiyotaka’s desk, arms awkward at his sides with his fingers tugging on the fabric of his sleep pants. He’s used to pockets, Kiyotaka thinks. So many of their interactions have started or ended with Mondo’s hands shoved away to hide his nervous ticks.

“You can sit down,” he says, aware that sounds wrong. He’s gesturing at the chair by his desk, even though Mondo isn’t looking at him and it all goes unnoticed. He wonders if he should stay standing, too.

At least three minutes pass in relative silence, Kiyotaka’s brain supplying the noises of a clock ticking to illustrate the movement of time. Kiyotaka has sat back down on his bed, hands in fists on his lap, watching Mondo stare at the same stretch of wall he’d contemplated earlier.

He opens his mouth to prompt Mondo, and is cut off. “’S pretty fuckin’ stupid, right?” he turns around, agitated, expecting an answer. Kiyotaka goes to point out that he can’t provide much of an opinion when he doesn’t know what it is Mondo thinks is stupid, but he continues anyway. “’S just a dream. Ain’t like it’s gonna happen, right?”

Never one to squander an opportunity to make the situation worse, Kiyotaka says, “That depends on the kind of dream you were having.”

Mondo looks at him, blankly, and then covers his eyes with his hands, digging his palms in. “Got caught committing murder. Or at least, bein’ on trial for murder, dunno if I actually did it or not -”

“Of course you didn’t.” He doesn’t know why he keeps saying things with such certainty when he has no reason and no way to back up his claims. “You would never do such a thing.”

“I already have!” he shouts, hands moving from his eyes to his mouth in self-horror. And he watches Kiyotaka, waiting for him to respond.

All he can say, “I don’t understand.”

Mondo starts pacing again, and Kiyotaka feels a need he can’t explain to touch him, ground him like Mondo has done for him so many times within the past month. “I killed my brother,” he says, finally, mouth strangled. “I just – I challenged him when I shouldn’t have an’ I almost got myself killed tryin’a get ahead and he -”

He pushed Mondo out of the way, so he wouldn’t be hit by oncoming traffic. Kiyotaka remembers this. Truth or dare – they did play that before. Someone dared Mondo to pick truth the next round, and the secret he had to give was how his brother died.

It had been one of those time they’d all been a little tipsy, a little sugar-high, a little nervous, and Kiyotaka remembers hearing him shout it all in run-on sentences, Chihiro next to him rubbing his shoulder. He remembers the class chorus telling him that it wasn’t his fault, ranging from particularly sympathetic to Byakuya’s assertion that his brother was an idiot with no concept of self-preservation. Kiyotaka had put the whole incident from his mind, less as a result of judgment and more to forget having to step between his two classmates, Mondo’s hand on his chest trying to push him aside to get at Byakuya.

Over a year. He’s been on this incline for over a year.

It would make the most sense to just tell Mondo that it isn’t his fault, and maybe he is saying it. Maybe that’s why Mondo is looking at him the way he is, like despite all the support from his classmates he’s still unsure. If Kiyotaka were to give someone that look, it would be because he’s afraid of them walking away. Of being abandoned.

This, seven, is deliberate. Kiyotaka decides on it. He looks at Mondo, and he thinks, _I can do for him what he does for me_ , or at least, that he can try. He pushes himself off the bed to where Mondo is standing, taking his head in his hands. He affixes him with as serious a look as he can manage in his sleep-deprived state, so that Mondo will know that what he says and what he does is in full honesty.

Kiyotaka kisses the corner of his mouth,  and Mondo lets him, not reacting.

There are a lot of things that he could say to try and smooth over the anxiety he can feel just beneath the surface. Everything collides in his head, an absolute mess, and no matter what he picks they will all be platitudes. So he kisses him again instead, a little more center, and waits for Mondo to kiss him back.

When he does, he melts, resting into Kiyotaka for support.

He’s never felt that before. The weight, in a way that doesn’t suffocate but feels comforting. He kisses Mondo harder, presses closer, light-headed and dizzy when he feels Mondo’s arms around him. _Wanted_.

He lets his hands drop to Mondo’s neck and remembers, very suddenly, that he is shirtless and it is after curfew and he is bolder when they are together. It’s highlighted by the sensation of Mondo’s tongue on his lips, and his easy response, opening his mouth.

He should stop. They should stop. At the very least, he shouldn’t be encouraging it, shouldn’t be pressing his tongue against Mondo’s, enjoying the noises Mondo makes in reply and how they feel against his lips or digging his nails into Mondo’s skin.

He starts to pull away, and Mondo follows him. Just as he has done every time Mondo kissed him first.

He’s tempted to pull away again, not to stop the kissing but to see if Mondo will keep reaching out for him. He’s so giddy at it he feels himself smiling against Mondo’s lips, not even caring about the dull ache when his head hits against the wall.

There’s an unpleasant clanging noises and Mondo jumps, smacking his face it to Taka’s. He almost laughs at that, too, and it takes him a couple seconds to recognize the sound. “My alarm,” he says.

Mondo looks disbelieving. “You set yer alarm to go off ‘t five in th’ mornin’?”

He shrugs. “We have a test.”

“You were gonna get up at five in the mornin’ for a science test?”

“I wanted to study!” Mondo rolls his eyes, moving back and turning off the clock. Kiyotaka closes his eyes and forces himself to count his breaths to calm down and cool down. When he opens them again, Mondo is bending his head and kissing him more chastely.

“For good luck,” he says.

He has the best of intentions, but after Mondo leaves, Kiyotaka just crawls back on his bed, and falls asleep.

* * *

He doesn’t really need to be in the library after the test, but he doesn’t feel like sitting in the cramped computer lab while he waits for the rest of his class to finish. Despite taking less time to study than he’d promised himself he would, Kiyotaka feels pretty positively about the whole thing. And now, he can just sit in the library and copy notes, or read for enjoyment.

He doesn’t actually have anything particular in mind.

For the moment, he’s got a blank piece of paper out, sketching flowers out on it. He’s trying not to let his mind be biased, drawing Hiro’s roses and Hina’s sunflowers, but winds up back at Mondo’s carnations, filling them in with green ink.

The hand on his wrist makes him stop.

He tells himself again that there’s no reason for him to be scared or to feel like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He’s just a student in the library, minding his own business, and for another second he doubts himself and tells himself that it’s all imagined. Everything that he’s thought about this girl for the past couple of weeks has just been an invention of a nervous mind. Finals were on the horizon, the school festival was coming up, and he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before.

_The fastest growing nail is on your middle finger._

Hers bite into the skin on his wrist, a twisted reminder of this morning that makes him feel, again, like he’s being watched, even when there’s no way she could have known.

“I saw him coming out of your room this morning.”

His stomach lurches. He doesn’t even know what’s keeping it all inside.

“You need to stop that.”

She’s leaning over into his space, hair framing her face like a backdrop curtain, hidden from anyone watching them too closely. He could probably pull his hand away if he tried, but there’s something different holding him in place. “What do you want?” he asks.

She doesn’t give him the kind of look that tells him he should know from her words alone. Rather, it’s like she’s been waiting for him to ask, so she can have the satisfaction of watching his face when she tells him, “Him.”

He wonders if she’s expecting him to say no. He thinks about it, snidely informing her that it seems clear which of the two of them he’s more interested in if the reason he’s breaking rules is to spend time with Kiyotaka. Except those kinds of words aren’t in his character, no matter how loudly the voice in the back of his head is screaming them. So instead, he tells her, “Oowada-kun is a person, not an object. He can’t be given, or taken.”

She leans down enough to be level with Kiyotaka, even pushing him halfway off the chair with her hip and nearly sitting in his lap. “Do you think he’s going to be happy with this, Ishimaru? Keeping everything closed off?” He doesn’t answer. “I’ve heard him say he likes girls,” she says, and interrupts him when his mouth opens. “Even if he likes boys, too, you know which one will be easier in the long run.”

Her nails are too close to his veins, and he can feel it all too well. “That doesn’t mean he’ll like _you_.”

“Oh, he’ll be with me whether he likes me or not,” she says, dragging scratches along the inside of his wrist. “We all know how desperate he is for a girl’s attention, to meet a girl who won’t run away when he yells at them. Which is why I’m going to confess to him first, and why you should stop before that happens.”

She almost makes it sound like reasonable advice, as if she’s only telling him to keep him from being hurt. There are still a lot of objections making their way up his throat, but he doesn’t quite get to him. The doors on the library are old and noisy, and she doesn’t jump away from him the way Mondo does when someone comes close to walking in on them. She rises properly, nails still in his wrist, letting her fingers drift off slowly and nails drag on the back of his hand as a warning.

“Good evening, Mondo,” she says, and he can’t imagine what kind of look he’s giving her for the use of his first name because his eyes are filling up. “I will see you at the school festival this weekend, won’t I?”

“Uh...yeah,” he says, and Taka thinks he’s probably blushing. He hears her say she looks forward to it, hears some other kind of background chatter that sounds like static he needs to block out of his mind so he can move or do something that isn’t sitting here feeling like he’s going to vomit.

He bolts away from the table before Mondo can reach him, skimming the shelves for something to occupy his mind, without actually processing what any of the titles say.

He can feel Mondo coming up behind him, looming over his shoulder. He’s not scared, per se, but now everything feels like a threat, feels uncomfortably like everything he does is wrong.

Mondo turns him around by the shoulder, so he’s backed against the bookshelves.

Kiyotaka hasn’t taken the time to see if anyone else is in the library, but he’s guessing that they’re not.

He doesn’t anticipate the angry expression on Mondo’s face, because he hasn’t seen it in a while. At first he doesn’t process what it is that’s gotten him like this, until his mind catches up to the implication that the girl must mean more to Mondo, know him better than she had let on or than Kiyotaka had been able to observe. This isn’t just someone with an interest in Mondo, this is a mutual attraction. And Mondo has misunderstood the whole situation, viewed from afar, as Kiyotaka flirting with his girlfriend.

He wishes there was a way to explain how very, very wrong Mondo is about the whole situation, but with how close they must be he doubts that Mondo would believe him. The height difference between them isn’t massive, not nearly what it is compared to Makoto and pretty much anyone else in their class, but it’s still enough for Mondo put one hand on the shelf above him and lean over, holding him in place.

Even knowing how furious Mondo must be, Kiyotaka can’t help but think that this version of him, too, is attractive. If he had any doubts about his sexuality before, he doesn’t now.

He probably should offer some kind of explanation, even if what comes out is _It wasn’t what it looked like_. So he’s surprised, understandably, when Mondo’s version of cutting him off  is kissing him.

It’s not gentle, or chaste, or even fumbling like their first kiss had been. In the grand scheme of things, it’s kind of weird. Kiyotaka can’t imagine wanting to kiss someone he’s angry with, but then there’s very little that he understands about relationships, including what it would be like to have one.

The fact that his lips feel bruised probably means that they’re not doing this right, and that he should probably tell Mondo to stop, but for all the horror the sentiment holds he finds that he doesn’t actually want him to.

Kiyotaka isn’t the one to pull back, but it’s better that they do. Like this, he’s breathless.

“Sorry,” Mondo grumbles, not looking all that sorry.

“Er...what for?” Taka asks.

Mondo’s hands are back in his pockets in record time, and Taka’s find their way to his sides, sliding the fabric of his pants between his fingers to keep from doing what he really wants to do: take Mondo’s hands out, and hold them.

The pang of loneliness, the hole in his chest, uncovers.

“In public,” Mondo mumbles.

“Oh. Right.” Right. He can’t be seen with Kiyotaka, like that. And Kiyotaka shouldn’t be seen with him, like that. There are a lot of things it could change. It could ruin both their chances for different things. Or at least, they can ruin Mondo’s.

Taka crosses his arms over his chest and stares at the marked and damaged areas of the carpet where patches have been sewn over holes in the acrylic. He doesn’t want Mondo to apologize for things as if Kiyotaka cares about them in the same amount. He doesn’t want to be...

He’s so spaced out he doesn’t notice Mondo touching his cheek until he asks “Are you okay?” and gets his own chance to be angry, pushing out from under Mondo’s arm and storming out of the library without responding.

* * *

Kiytoaka had not made any previous decision that their ninth kiss would be their last. Had he put, specifically, any forethought into it, he would have decided on an even number, a significant number, or something ending in a five. But the decision comes to him spur of the moment, a reaction to the situation, and he knows that if he gives himself leeway he will not follow through.

It’s a pattern he’s beginning to notice.

The day of their school festival is too hot and too bright for Kiyotaka to really uphold the dress code, even for himself, shedding his jacket before even an hour has passed. None of the things his class has chosen to do are especially in his area of expertise (because, of course, his own is not all that useful -) which has meant, in all, that he has spent most of his time outside, taking tickets.

A haunted house is probably not the most creative thing they could have come up with, anyway.

“A haunted house? Really? I thought you were meant to be the country’s best students.”

One would think, with the time he has been given, that Kiyotaka would have acclimatized to the sound of her voice, to the ever-present possibility of being watched. Somehow, it always winds up coming when he is not expecting it, when he has let himself relax or is focusing on other things.

He really should have let Hina start off at the door. The paranoid chatter in the back of his mind tells him that it wouldn’t matter. If he’d started later, she would have come later. And there’s bickering, now, between the part of him that is telling himself that he is imagining things, and the part of him that is telling himself to run.

But he can’t treat her differently than he does anyone else who comes by, so he gives her a smile that he hopes hides the panic he’s feeling, but he very much doubts it. “Hello! Do you have a ticket?”

She waves the thing in his face before she sets it in his hands, but other than that, she doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t know if it makes him more or less anxious that it’s all she does before she steps through the doors of their relatively small setup.

That’s, he thinks, the last he’ll see of her that day.

Hina comes out about ten minutes later to put a sign on the doors that says they’re taking a break and asks Taka if he wants to walk around for a bit and stretch his legs while she takes over the table. He’s not cramped this time and his only discomfort is from the heat, but it’s better to get in this break while he has it. Privately he thinks that it gives him an excuse not to be around when that girl gets out, although there’s probably not much she can do when the day is so crowded.

He fails to account for her finding Mondo inside, and following him out.

It's not really any of his business what she gets up to, or what Mondo gets up to. He thinks they’re friends, but it occurs to him when he sees them together that there’s not much he’s asked in the way of personal talk that Mondo hasn’t already offered to him. He could have asked long ago if there was anyone he was interested in courting, if he had a type, if he’d been in previous relationships.

He knew Mondo liked girls. But this is his first time seeing him liking one.

Kiyotaka doesn’t know if she’s aware that he can see them and it’s unjustifiably paranoid to assume that she’s doing all this just to humiliate him, but she touches his arms so easily and Mondo doesn’t recoil. When she laughs and it comes out too loud, he looks at her and smiles and Kiyotaka feels like throwing something. He’s never given to those kinds of impulses.

There are lots of places around the school where he can go and hide and be by himself, and if his class knows him as well as they all seem to they won’t think it’s strange that he needs some time alone.

Not that he cares.

_Not that he cares!_

He manages to pick a wall that gives a bit of shade and covers up his face with his hands, pressing himself into the brick in frustration. 

Mondo follows him. Of course. He doesn’t know how Mondo knows where he was or why he follows him and there’s too much in him that wants to scream at Mondo to just let him be.

Mondo must be as bad at reading people and situations as Kiyotaka is, because for the second time in two days, they have some sort of error in communication that Mondo decides to remedy by kissing him .

And that’s when Kiyotaka decides it has to stop.

There’s no kind of superlative to describe how it’s happening. He feels desperate, because he knows there are parts of him that are looking for reasons to continue as they have been. Mondo tastes like cotton candy and the back of his neck where Taka holds him is sweaty and he feels hotter even than the heat outside is making him.

But in its own way, unremarkable as it is, it does make him feel better.

There is so much going on in the moment that Kiyotaka feels he has to be present for that having just one thing to focus on is grounding. He feels small and insignificant in ways that are inexplicably comforting and the realization of it hits him, all at once, just about knocking the breath out of him.

He’s in love. He’s said this before, he’s known this before. He's sat in his room with this idea and swallowed down every objection he had to his own stupid fantasies. He doubts Mondo knows that he’s scared, even when he feels himself start to cry and knows that Mondo can feel it where his hands are placed on Taka’s face.

 _So much sets him off_.

He wonders if he notices that Taka is kissing like he’s saying goodbye.

Mondo pulls back with a look that does not exemplify surprise, thumbs spreading the tears on Kiyotaka’s cheeks. He angles his head so his ridiculous hair that Taka hates and loves like he does everything else is out of the way and he can push their foreheads together, their noses touching.

Taka wants to go back. He wants to go back to the party and pull back before it hits six seconds. He wants to go back and keep his eyes open when Mondo kisses him a second time and tell him it’s not appropriate and move on with his life. He wants to go back to the hallway and the kitchen and push every distracted thought from his mind so he can just get the freaking ice and go back to the rec room with the rest of his class, and he wants to go back to the hallway of his dorm and keep himself from asking Mondo why they kept kissing.

But most, he wants to go back into this. He wants to keep falling. He wants to change his mind a fourth time. He wants to stop himself from saying what he knows he needs to and tell Mondo that he can do this forever.

Which is exactly why he can’t. “I can’t keep doing this.” He’s not sure if any noise leaves his mouth or if Mondo knows what he says from the shapes his lips make. He hums in question and pulls back and Taka has never felt colder. “I can’t keep doing this, running around in secret with you. Not when you want -” this wasn’t part of the plan, part of the prepared statement, not something he means to say.

But he’s started to say it anyway.

He shuts his mouth with so much force that his teeth ache and click. Mondo’s hands are still on his face, but he feels alone. “I can’t blame you for wanting something normal. Maybe... No.”

He breathes.

Mondo starts to say his name.

“If it was – if it _was_ just keeping this a secret, I could stay. But I can’t be here, and watch you fall in love with someone else. I know asking you to be with me is asking too much. I can’t expect you to return my feelings. But I can’t change how I feel, either, so I need to leave before I get hurt worse.”

He’s never seen someone look so dumbstruck, but if he gives Mondo the chance to speak his resolve will crumble and he’ll keep falling and spiraling and sticking to methods that don’t and never will work. He pulls, with effort, from Mondo’s hands and short cuts the other way around, pushing through the trees, avoiding the strange looks he should be used to by now.

Someone taps him on the shoulder and it is so, so very lucky for Leon Kuwata that Taka has mastered the art of self-restraint. “Dude, are you okay?” he asks.

He smiles, back rigid, arm throwing itself up in unintended and useless salute. “I’m fine,” he lies.

* * *

(For the first five days that Taka avoids, as much as possible, even being in the same room with him, Mondo tries to figure out what in the hell he meant about Mondo falling in love with someone else – especially when Taka was the one getting hit on in the library.

The answer eludes him. But then, he’s probably not going to find it by staring at the back of Taka’s head, like he’ll be able to read the other boy’s thoughts just by concentrating enough.

By Tuesday of week two, he has completely given up, and taken to trying to follow Taka, hoping that he can catch him somewhere and ask him personally what it is he’s done wrong.

He turns out to be a lot faster than Mondo thought he was.

On Friday, he asks Leon, as they are pouring over notes in the classroom, shoving every conceivable piece of junk in their mouths, “Does it seem to you like I’m into someone?”

Leon gives him a look full of pity and disgust. “I shouldn’t even have to dignify that question with an answer,” he says.)

* * *

It's been an agonizing two weeks.  It’s hard to believe it’s been that short a span of time, or how in such a long stretch that Kiyotaka’s feelings haven’t changed at all. It feels like he’s lost far more than an imaginary significant other. It’s like he’s lost his best friend. In ways, he guesses he has; the moments between them kissing, every platonic touch, the times during class when Mondo called him out on his preconceived notions... Built up over more than a year.

Maybe he’s meant more than Kiyotaka realized. Maybe that’s why everything hurts. He is, truly, always the last to know.

And it’s been strange, too, trying to avoid him every time Mondo at every turn. Mondo has chased him through hallways, only barely missing him, the rest of their class keeping him shielded with a sudden rush of questions and requests. In time, he’ll be able to return to his routine. All of this, is just for now. He knows that if he gives Mondo an inch, he will end up running a mile.

Today is no different from any of the other past sixteen days. Kiyotaka makes his way to the front of the building to catch a bus, back stiff, pretending he doesn’t hear or feel Mondo following him. Once he’s out in front of their friends, in front of everyone else, he won’t -

There’s that familiar whiplash of brown hair, blinding him against the sunlight. She isn’t subtle at all, shoulder colliding with Kiyotaka’s. He doesn’t need to see her face to know that she’s smirking at him. It’s enough that he goes to rub long-since faded marks on his wrist of her nails. It’s enough that he can hear her voice, clear and loud, when she calls, “Oowada-kun?”

Funny. She hadn’t used that kind of formality in the library, where it was just the two of them to hear her.

 _Keep walking_. He tells himself he has to, even if the rest of his class is frozen. No one will ask why he isn’t watching an event that in no way concerns him.

He doesn’t manage to make it far. “Yeah? What’d you want?” Mondo asks.

It’s so rude, how it comes out of his mouth, but it doesn’t put her off. “I’m so embarrassed,” she says, she lies, voice betraying the smile on her mouth. “But I can’t be cowardly about it -” His feet can get him a few more steps, at least, enough so he doesn’t have to listen to her jabs at him - “I’ve come to confess my feelings for you, and I hope that you accept them!”

Her confession is less private than their first kiss had been, and Taka wonders cruelly how much of it is genuine, and how much of it is engineered to embarrass Mondo into accepting or humiliate him. How much of it is a show? How much does she really care?

There are seconds of virtual silence. It’s their class, Kiyotaka realizes; they’ve all stopped their conversations, dropped their pretenses of other interests. They’re staring, he thinks, at Mondo and this girl who is confessing to him.

The air could be his breath. Taka feels it, like precognition, and it occurs to him: _He didn’t know_. “Yeah.” _This isn’t a girl Mondo knows well._ “I can’t -” _Mondo is blindsided by her interest in him._ “I can’t do this.” _He was only ever just being nice_.

There’s an anxious, tilting break to his voice that Kiyotaka recognizes because he’s felt it too many times. Despite himself, his drive to be gone before this gets worse, he can’t move.

She says, “ _What._ ” Flatly. Demanding. Enraged. Her, or the version of her that Taka calls to mind.

“No. I don’t -”

He doesn’t turn to watch, or see Mondo shift, but he can hear it and he can imagine it. The kind of shuffle people do when they are uncomfortable. Taka smiles at the pavement, some awful part of him feeling vindicated. He shouldn’t be happy to hear someone else receive rejection. He shouldn’t let himself get invested in hypothetical outcomes.

Any semblance of civility is gone when she asks, “Why not?”

Mondo’s volume, as it so often does when he’s anxious, increases in volume. It matches hers now. “I’m in love with someone else.” _Oh?_ “A guy.” _Oh?_ “Just -”

Kiyotaka feels his body burning. He can feel the blush up in his ears, growing ivy-like over his neck and cheeks. There’s a part of him that wants to bolt from this like he has every day for the past week and a half from the feeling of being chased, to run out on any possibility of being hurt further. He tells himself he shouldn’t assume it’s him Mondo’s talking about, even though nothing else seems remotely likely.

And against his other judgments, the person he was before the last two months or that party he or the start of high school, he turns. He turns and watches Mondo move out of her reach, running down the steps Taka’s managed to take away from Mondo, and towards him.

He doesn’t hesitate.

The tenth time they kiss (two seconds) is like the first (four seconds): they are in front of (six seconds) their class and (eight seconds) Taka doesn’t know (ten seconds) what it means or (twelves seconds) how to react.

Mondo pulls back, one hand on Taka’s collarbone, one hand on his cheek. People are probably staring, but for the first time, Mondo isn’t looking around at them, and Kiyotaka doesn’t care. All he can look at is Mondo and his soft eyes and softer lips.

“Say something,” he says, in a voice only Kiyotaka can hear.

Kiyotaka blinks, and says, a little too loud, “Me too.” He presses up onto the balls of his feet, free hand grabbing the back of Mondo’s neck to support himself and pull him down as he kisses him (two seconds) like they are alone (four seconds), and (stop counting seconds) smiling when Mondo gasps and breathes into him, saying, “ _Don’t stop._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> The girl this story isn’t given a name because she’s not really a specific Person Standing in the Way so much as she is representative of systemic homophobia. That’s also why she doesn’t do anything specifically violent or threatening: a lot of people who benefit from and perpetuate homophobia don’t. She doesn’t get a comeuppance in the end, because homophobia doesn’t stop when or if you decide to come out, and she’s representative of that. 
> 
> I've had way too many supposedly well-meaning people say that if I just “own” being trans or being gay, that people will as a by-product not do anything trans- or homophobic, because people “don’t care”. And while it’s true that there are many people who wouldn’t be bothered by it, the fact that they “don’t care” is actually just part of the problem. In a way, being gay (and, for me, being trans) in the current socio-political climate is like constantly being gaslit. But hey, at least there’s fanfiction, right? 
> 
> Aside from this depressing author's note, I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
